


Still Memories

by titC



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, I think my summaries are even worse than my titles, Lucifer does drugs, also, also I heart anaphors, at least he's got great pecs, back to your regular classic titC woe-is-me Lucifer, bad Lucifer, cracky and angsty is CRANGSTY, curly hair of emoting, don’t behave like Lucifer, everyone can resist Dan, guyliner of feels, malfunctioning lighter of angst, no one can resist Trixie, poor guy, super saiyan Lucifer, the past perfect is so niiiice, trifecta of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:57:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe is on a highway to hell, and so is Lucifer...<br/>Mazikeen is a grumpy witness to it all, but still the coolest. And hottest.<br/>I don't know how to sum it up... Read it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Memories

For someone supposedly bright (hah), he could be really, really stupid. Or suicidal. Was there a difference anyway? Following that Decker woman like a puppy knowing full well that it was looking for trouble… He’d already got shot at, even died – oh yes, she knew about that – and yet he was insisting on continuing his exploration of this new self-destructive streak. She had made a vow and she intended to honor it, but really he was making it near impossible. What was _wrong_ with him?

And that’s how Maze found herself shadowing him even more than usual, ready to intervene if he tried to jump on bullets again and snapping a few pictures here and there of his utter stupidity in the hope of convincing him that the King of Hell, vacation or no, was behaving in the most ridiculous way he’d ever had – and that was saying something for the impulsive, thrill-seeking, _newly-mortal_ charming little shit that he was.

Today was apparently run after a crazy mystic healer crook day, the kind that made him both elated to stick a finger out at religion, eager to punish their despicable actions (oh, how she wished they were in hell for some proper torture) and enraged at the mockery of his father’s creation, although he’d never admit to that last bit. She knew better, though. She knew him better than he knew himself, really; and also he was the King of Hell _and_ of lying to himself. The only one he lied to, and wasn’t that the icing on the bitter, stale, burned birthday cake his father had presented him with?

From up on a low roof, Maze watched him throw around the girl, a thirty-something bad girl wannabe who’d stumbled onto more than she could chew when she’d gone from drug trafficking to ritualistic killer for hire. She couldn’t see any danger so far and he seemed well in control of the situation, if not of Decker who was apparently determined to stop him from damaging their suspect. Humans and their spineless rules. The detective finally put a hand on his forearm and glared at him, and he turned to look down at her as his eyes went from properly satanic to confused and that’s when it happened, too fast and out of the blue for her to jump down and prevent it.

Decker made a surprised little sound and he caught her as she stumbled and crumbled backwards; and he gave a single burning glance at the woman still standing with a triumphant smile and a dripping knife, a glance which reduced her to a whimpering mess. He ignored her after that, ignored her whimpers and her trying to get away on shaky, unreliable limbs. He was holding onto something, someone better – holding on, really.

“Detective,” he said, urgent and unsteady, kneeling in dirt and blood, “Detective, stay here, don’t, no – ” he’d bunched his brand new Prada jacket and was pressing it on her flank and trying to keep her awake by sheer force of will, but it wouldn’t work. Even from up here, she could smell it. He probably could too. The knife had been coated in something that should never, ever have left hell. She was doomed, and doomed straight to hell.

The cars slowed down in the street behind her, then stopped. Amenadiel landed in front of his brother, frowning at first then his eyes widening. At least they couldn’t hear the whimpers of that bitch anymore, her scrabbling hands and terrified screams frozen in time for the moment. She’d enjoy cutting some answers about where she’d found Phlegethon blood-river water out of her soon… Maze jumped down, getting a knife out in preparation.

“Take her,” Lucifer was saying. “Take her to Raphael, he’ll know what to do, right? Right? Don’t let her die, don’t let her end up in hell, don’t…”

“It is not my place to interfere, Luci.”

“Not your place…?” He delicately lay Decker on the ground and stood up to face his brother, fire in his eyes and blood on his white shirt, his clenched fists. “What about what you did to that cop? Wasn’t that interfering? You…” He fell back on her knees when she tried to talk. “Detective, you’re still here, it’s good, it’s…” It wasn’t good. She shouldn’t have been able to break out of Amenadiel’s time freeze. She was already slipping to the other side.

“Trixie,” she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered.

“At school, I imagine. You’ll be interrupting investigations again to pick her up quite soon, I’m sure… Detective?” She’d closed her eyes again.

He lifted her up, very gently; and thrust her in his brother’s arms and glared at him until great gray wings shimmered into view. Maze exchanged a narrow-eyed glance with Amenadiel as he took to the skies, a not-quite-dead-yet, not-quite-human-anymore woman in his arms.

“I know you’re here, Maze.” He didn’t turn around, his focus on the woman cowering at his feet. “Deal with her. I want answers.” If I touch her I’ll kill her, he didn’t say. He didn’t need to.

He walked away into the street where the cars were honking and speeding and competing for road dominance again, and yet parting around him as he walked through the traffic like Moses.

She could see his back, straight and proud as ever. She wondered what his face looked like.

Then, it was time to practice some of her favorite skills. She licked her lips and got down to business.

 

Mazikeen found him later that night sprawled upstairs on the sofa, all studied nonchalance and half-filled tumbler and smirk firmly in place, a sour-faced Espinoza fuming on the other side of the low table. The kid ran to her when Maze walked in, and her father glared at her.

“… and now you! Trix, come here.”

“But Daddy!”

“We’ll just go have…” She looked down. Maybe not a Talisker, Lucifer would burn the other side of her face if she harmed Decker’s daughter. “…a chocolate milkshake in the kitchen. You two enjoy your manly face-off.” She just knew the douche was staring at her ass as she led the enthusiastic little thing away from all their glowering and posturing. Men. They should just fight it out – well, maybe it would be too much of a curb-stomp battle, though. No fun. Ah, she really could do with a good brawl right about now. Clears the mind.

At least from the kitchen and with the blender on, they wouldn’t hear them. Kid didn’t need that on top of everything else. Dr Linda would be proud, she thought. And anyway if Lucifer was trying to tell Dan the douche his ex had been stabbed… the kid was better off with her.

After a while, as she was showing a wide-eyed Trixie how to murder a pineapple (so she’d have slices ready for some cocktails later on, of course), her father came to get her.

“Hey monkey, you’re going to stay with me for a few days, how’s that?”

The kid thought for a moment. “Lucifer said you might be too busy.”

“He said that, didn’t he.” He looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “I’m never too busy for my little girl, Trix.”

“But there was that time – ”

“ _Yes_. Well. Not this time.” He looked up at Maze and opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“I can still pick her up or keep an eye on her if you’re stuck.” Trixie was doing the big innocent eyes thing, too. Team girls for the win. She looked back at the kid. “But your mother will be back very soon anyway.”

“Yeah, Lucifer said it was just for a few days tops.” She grinned as she jumped from her stool and started dragging her father to the door. “Mom is like Molly McDowell! Super secret justice stuff!”

“Yeah, monkey. We’ll go to the house get some of your stuff first, all right?” She pointed at a little suitcase in the entrance. “Ah. Okay. Well, we’ll be going now.” The douche glared at them, probably to assert his, well, whatever it was he wanted to assert, and they rode the elevator down.

Maze turned to Lucifer, who was trying to light a cigarette with slightly trembling fingers. The lighter was not cooperating, and he threw it away. “You picked the kid up at her school? You brought her here?”

The cigarette was hanging from his long fingers, twitching in time with the blood pulsating through his veins, or maybe his nerves. Since he probably had them, now. “I called Dr Linda to ask for advice, came back here to change, then went to her school. The Detective…”

“Stop it. You _hate_ children. This is really getting out of hand.”

“And yet, who’s volunteering for baby-sitting? Heard you, Maze.” He stalked to the balcony, his back to her.

“I like her, she’s devious. _You don’t!_ ” She stomped outside. “Look at what’s happened already. You’re getting shot at, bleeding, dying – yes, I know about that little stroll to hell you took – and becoming all soft and caring and it has to stop! What’s next, growing old? Buying a house in the suburbs with Decker? Going to church every Sunday? White picket-fence, a dog?”

She was trying to rouse his anger, but it didn’t work. He only gave her a half-assed, tired look and put his cigarette to his lips and then glared at it when he remembered it was still unlit. “I could release you from your vow, Maze. You could go back to torturing souls.”

“This is insulting.” He only shrugged. Fine. Change of track. “I dealt with the woman.”

He looked marginally more alert. Interested, at least. “Learn anything?”

“Yes. You have to go back to hell.” She stood her ground when, this time, anger consumed him. Red and fire and his fingers squeezing her throat, backing her against the wall and holding her up. She liked him, this familiar Lucifer who’d been her everything for so long, whom she’d follow – whom she’d followed – everywhere. She put her thighs around his waist, and that – was the wrong move. He threw her down with a disgusted growl.

“Don’t,” he said.

She picked herself up. “Don’t do it for your father. Do it for yourself! Or do it for you pet detective.” He narrowed his eyes. “Someone gave that bitch Phlegethon water.”

“ _Who_.”

“She didn’t know. But…” He was going to lose it, she knew it – and not in a good, proper, Lucifer-ish way. She edged away from him, closer to the railing. She could always jump – painful, but she’d survive. “Her contact told her it’s not the first time he’s in touch with humans. They’re trying to make you angry enough to start a war.”

“A war.”

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

He closed his eyes. “Against…” He waved a hand at the darkening sky.

“You’d have jumped on the idea at one time.” Although he never did. She suspected his feelings about his father were not as clear-cut as he pretended, but now was not the time to talk about it; whatever her opinions on the topic. He had Dr Linda for that anyway.

“You said it wasn’t the first time…”

“They’ve been stirring trouble for a while. Stirring trouble around you.”

“Malcolm? That was my brother.”

“That roach of a human did really go further than anything I’d seen before there at the end.”

“Anything else?”

She hesitated. But she couldn’t go back now. “The priest.”

He’d never really scared her – she’d known him for too long, they’d shared too much. She knew his moods, she knew very well he could give her the cold shoulder, she knew they could fight; but he’d never, ever do her any lasting harm.

Now, he reminded her of how he’d been like, at the beginning. When he’d just fallen from heaven, when he was still unused to the fire burning in him and the pain and the darkness and the ash and the torture and the screams. The tears. The curses and the blame and the hate. When he believed he was supposed to encourage them and revel in them and they just made him sick. When he was lost and so, so angry and full of despair and he didn’t understand how he could have lost everything; before he’d become bitter and resentful more than anything else, before he’d discovered how to take what pleasure he could from punishing sinners and before his more playful side had resurfaced, a bit twisted, a bit singed. Back when he'd lashed out at anyone, for anything; and everyone in hell had learned to respect his strength and fear him.

He had no one to lash out at except her, right now. She looked at him warily. His eyes were darker, and the railing shattered under his hand. He didn’t even notice. She licked her lips; a war against heaven would not be a good idea but still, it _was_ tempting. So tempting. She would so love to give them all the finger; all these holier-than-thou, stuck-up, judgmental bastards. I would be a glorious end. But she didn’t want it to end, really. Even life on Earth was better than no life at all. Than the end of the world. The building shook and street lights flickered.

“Lucifer.” His eyes were so dark, fixed on the clouds up there that hid the sky and reflected the city lights, yellow and red and white surrounded by darkness.

“What. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” He looked down at her. “Or has banging my brother changed your mind? Has his holy cock – ” she slapped him.

“Stop it.” She wasn’t Decker, but she could certainly stop him from being stupid. Or try to. She’d vowed to protect him, after all. She looked into his face, his betrayed grimace. His eyes got marginally less dark. The apocalypse would wait a bit longer.

Not so long ago, she’d have brought him alcohol and drugs and Brittanies. She thought now he’d only wander away and hole up on the balcony with a bottle or three if she tried it. She wasn’t sure this new Lucifer was an improvement, but then again she couldn’t do much about it; so she shoved him into the sofa and plunked a small mountain of cigarettes, a syringe, a spoon, pills, drugs, and a few bottles of hard liquor in front of him. And a lighter that worked (she checked).

She left him there for the night to work through it all and went down to the club after a last glare at the sky. She’d probably find him still up there in the morning, blinking up at her and long limbs all uncoordinated for a few minutes, coltish and disheveled and surprised at the state he’d be in, trying and failing to mask it as it usually was like when he _really_ indulged.

Except tomorrow, there would not be passed out people around him to step over. Was it any better?

 

Two days later, Decker reappeared on the precinct car park. The douche stumbled on her, dazed and confused among the cars. He called an ambulance, waited anxiously for the doctors’ verdict, and got Penelope to bring Trixie to her mother when they decided she was just suffering from a knock to the head, which would explain she didn’t seem to remember much from the past few days. Afterwards, everyone assumed she’d followed their suspect, tried to go undercover, got into a fight maybe? No one really knew but since she was back and mostly fine, no one wanted to look at a gift horse in the mouth (except, of course, for the detective herself).

So the douche barged in Lux that very night, asking for more explanations on her behalf. He didn’t get them and left in a huff, but Maze reckoned the detective herself would soon turn up with way more questions. She wasn’t wrong.

Decker did arrive the next day, in the middle of the afternoon while the kid was, presumably, at school. She must still be on medical leave, or some sort of leave at least. Whatever. She wasn’t carrying her gun under her biker’s jacket, she noticed.

“Where is he?” She asked when she spotted Maze browsing a magazine behind the bar in the empty club.

“What do you want to see him for?”

“Mazikeen. Please.” That last word must have been painful to say given the face she was making.

“He doesn’t need you.” He was already brooding enough as it was, about his father and about hell and about traitors and, of course, her. It always came back to her these days.

“But I need answers.”

“’Bout what?” Decker only stared at her. She wasn’t dumb, she had to give her that. Maze sighed. “What do you remember?”

The detective sat down and took a gulp from Maze’s own glass. “A knife. Pain. Then vague things – soft things and voices speaking tongues I didn’t understand and no more pain. Light. Something burning in me. I think Lucifer’s brother was there? Fog or something. Then waking up in hospital with my ex’s face hovering above me.”

“Ew.” Which earned her narrowed eyes, of course. She didn’t even like him anymore, so _what_? “Anything else? Anything… stranger?”

“What do you think I should remember?”

“Stuck-up angels, wings, I don’t know. Never been up there.”

“Up there.”

“I think you know very well what happened to you.”

“Yeah, I got stabbed. Except I have no scar, no pain, no nothing to prove it. I told the doctors I didn’t remember anything, I didn’t want to stay at the hospital.”

“You…” of course that’s when he ran down the stairs.

“Maze, going for a ri – Detective.” He stopped mid-step.

It was like watching a plane crash, watching it bounce a bit in the air and swerve and finally take a nose dive, watching it fall to the ground with a plume of dark dark smoke escaping it and the engines screaming and for long, long seconds you just watched, because it was the only thing you could do. And then there was a great screeching sound of metal and smoke and fire and death. Maze wanted to close her eyes, because she didn’t care about planes, but she cared about him. She kept them open.

Decker hurried to him, poked him in the chest and asked for explanations and didn’t seem to notice how he looked at her, afraid and full of wonder at the same time. He should just have left at that moment. Of course, he didn’t. He glanced away, mumbled something; she wasn’t sure there were actual words in there. And then.

Then, the detective caught his hand mid gesture and his head whipped back to her with burning eyes and a savage snarl on his lips. She gasped, then he tugged his hand away violently. It was red and black and charred and painful-looking right where her skin had touched his, the shape of her fingers clearly visible. They stayed unmoving a few long moments, the fire in his eyes dimming and his face smoothing out little by little.

Then he turned away and ran back up, and she watched him go, rooted to the spot.

Eventually, she turned around and walked back to the bar, mouth still half-open and a thousand-yard stare blanking her features. She sat back on a stool, grabbed the tumbler Maze pushed in her shaky fingers, and downed it in one gulp. She coughed a bit, came back into her skin little by little.

“What… God, what happened?”

“ _He_ happened.” At Decker's questioning sound, she went on. “God happened, I guess. You were stabbed with a poisoned knife. The kind of poison that sends you straight to hell, no other option. Lucifer called his brother, begged him to take you up. I assume that whatever they did to heal you turned you into something lethal for him. For me too, I guess.”

“What… what are you? Really.”

“You know what we are. He’s told you often enough. Where do you think Amenadiel took you? Don’t be dense.”

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered.

“I don’t care what you believe, Decker. Just that you stay away from him.”

“But…”

“You are a poison to him. You have always been; but now just you being there, untouchable and deadly… You stay away from him.” But she wouldn’t. Not her style. She’d need _him_ to send her away, and… he’d never do that.

“I can just not touch him,” she said in a low voice. “I can just keep some space between us and wear gloves and. And.” She shook her head.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?” The detective’s voice was growing steadier, little by little. She could see what he liked in her, apart from the breasts – they _were_ nice, she remembered. “Why do you hate me, Maze?”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“Trixie can’t shut up about – ” she made air quotes “ – Maze and Lucifer. Picked it up from her. Blame her, if you can.” She had a little evil smirk on her face, and fine. Fine, she won. This time. Because of the kid. “So. Why do you hate me?”

“Because you’re breaking him, Decker. Since you appeared, he gets hurt, he dies, he’s getting soft and human and this is not him. It’s only setting him up for another fall, and he doesn't need that. I won’t allow it.”

“I thought he enjoyed it. Sort of.”

She couldn’t take it anymore. Maze slammed her glass on the bar, grabbed her jacket – careful not to touch her skin – and snarled in her surprised face. “Because, _detective_ , of the way he looks at you when you’re not watching.”

“What way? A lecherous way?”

“Sometimes, Decker, I really hate you.” She threw her back on the stool.

“Thought that was your baseline.”

“Fuck you, Decker.” She got her phone out. “Now, I have to shadow him to make sure he stays alive and doesn’t get himself shot. Or killed. Both things that have already happened _because of you_. Now look.”

“You… stalk us?”

“And that’s what you focus on. No, I try to save him from himself and from you. Look at his face. Look. He refuses to admit it, but it’s proof. Proof he’s not really himself anymore.” At least, not his post-fall self. But it was the only one she’d ever known.

Decker pursed her lips and finally dropped her narrow-eyed gaze from Maze’s face to the phone, and she started to flip through the photos; enlarging some, stopping for a while over others. She watched them chatting over a corpse and a coffee, him slightly bent towards her while she obviously fought a smile. Watched him look baffled, hurt, delighted, angry, soft, sad, enthralled, confused, mischievous, wistful, eager, lost, all while his eyes were on her as she was, well. Out of the frame, or looking elsewhere, or rolling her eyes… Maze could see in her expression that she remembered some of those moments, the outrageous things he’d probably just said or how she’d wanted to strangle him or maybe that she’d just recalled she needed to buy eggs. Humans were strange sometimes.

“Oh,” she said. “Did you show him these?”

“He refuses to see them.”

“It’s… pretty clear.”

“You are destroying him, Decker. It’s all on you. You didn’t let him fuck you out of his mind before, and now he can’t even touch you.”

“I didn’t know.”

“How could you not? He even broke into your house to make you pancakes! The _devil! Pancakes!_ ”

The detective winced. “But why… what’s happening when I touch him?”

“You were pretty far gone already when Amenadiel flew you up. I guess you’re not entirely human anymore.”

“ _What_?”

“You were going straight to hell with that thing. Would have taken something pretty powerful to bring you back _and_ keep you out of hell when you die. You must have a part of heaven in you, now.”

“A part of – nevermind. Why would he be able to touch his brother, then?”

“You’re not an angel and you’re not dead. I guess it doesn't manifest in you as it does in them. Besides…” she stopped as they felt a tremor shake the building for a few seconds. “Huh.” The muted TV screen behind her started flashing news of a mild earthquake and warnings to get away from the ocean. “Besides, he’s banned from heaven. He’d probably die if he went back there.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Amenadiel’s deep voice resonated strangely in the empty club and made the detective jump. “Glad to see you’re all better, Chloe.” Oh, so they were on a first name basis now. Maze was disgusted. Her boss _never_ called her Chloe, from what she’d heard.

“”Well I… yeah, I guess. Apparently I have you to thank for that, so. Thank you.”

“Lucifer insisted.”

“Still. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, where’s he? I can’t find him.”

Maze felt her eyes widen. She turned to the TV behind her. “The earthquake.” The cameras were on the ocean, the deserted beaches. They were fearing a tsunami. They wouldn’t get one.

“What? No.” He bent over the bar to squint at the TV. “I don’t believe it. Why would he?”

“Why would he what?”

He turned back to the detective. “That earthquake. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was him going back to hell.”

 

Days turned into weeks turned into months. Lux was still going strong, because Maze, although not a pianist, certainly knew how to make people come and come again and spend – in all meanings of the word. The detective sometimes came, dragged by her daughter; and while she and Trixie had fun in Lucifer’s kitchen Decker would usually corner Amenadiel to try and get news from Lucifer. She wasn’t quite sure how he got his info; he’d probably kept some contacts from when he’d briefly kept an eye on hell although he probably avoided showing his face there.

She said she missed him. At least he hadn’t gone home without you, Maze thought savagely, spearing a tomato. He had found a way to leave earth while he’d claimed for so long he simply couldn't even if he’d wanted to. The tomato sprayed her and the kid with juice and seeds. Fuck tomatoes.

“Hey,” Decker said wandering into the kitchen, Amenadiel in tow. “Why are there so many hair products in the bathroom?”

She exchanged a glance with him over the detective’s head. “We don’t talk about the hair,” they said together.

Trixie giggled, and maybe she felt a bit lighter in that moment. Just a bit. Better not get used to it.

 

“Hey,” the girl said one day. “Do you have kid pictures?”

Maze and Amenadiel looked down at her. “No," she said. “Maybe,” he said. She scowled.

“Don’t mind her, it’s a school thing. Getting in touch with good old-fashioned paper. They’re doing images next week.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“What, do you have cameras up there?” The detective was always carefully avoiding the h-words (and the a-word and the d-words and the s-word) around the kid. “Hey monkey, why don’t you go read the book your teacher gave you?”

“But mommy…”

“Just for a little while baby, we need to talk about grown-up things now.”

Maze sighed. Decker wanted the latest update from hell, presumably (which was as usual: wings or no wings, the fear of Satan was apparently being reinstated _very_ firmly in everyone’s minds downstairs). “Come, kid. Let’s just go get wet.”

The kid squealed, her mother scowled, and Maze went to poke around the kid’s bag to see it she had anything suitable for the pool. Nakedness was apparently frowned upon here. “Just go in your shirt and underwear, Trix,” the detective finally said. She narrowed her eyes at Maze.

“Yeah, yeah.” As if she didn’t have anything suitable to splash around with a human spawn. Well. Might take some digging. She must have _something_.

As they were engaged in a water fight – she could clearly see in those moments why being a kid was supposed to be good times – the elevator dinged, and the douche came out. If only the old Lucifer could see his penthouse, gone from Orgy City to Family Central. If only. But he wasn’t here, and the Lucifer she’d known and served for so long might not even exist anymore. Espinoza stomped to the pool and glared at Maze, then turned the glare on his ex.

“Why do I have to pick up my daughter here and not at home?”

“Come join us daddy!” Trixie splashed water and drenched his trousers and he looked back at them.

Maze smiled beatifically at him. “Yes, do come. I remember what’s under those clothes – ”

“YesWellIt’sTimeToGoNowComeWithDaddy.” He looked a bit panicky, it was hilarious. She gave him her best grin. With teeth.

When he left with the kid and Decker went home soon after him, she got out of the pool and dripped her way to the bar for a drink, enjoying Amenadiel’s eyes on her. It put her in the right mood. Got to be ready to entertain the clubbers that night.

 

The next weekend, the kid had brought a little swimsuit. But Amenadiel had something even better, and she soon forgot about the pool. He opened the big case he had, and out came… photographs, sort of. Large ones. Still pictures, at least; on a kind of parchment she just knew was not from earth.

The detective glanced down at her daughter. “Where did you get… those?”

“Oh, my siblings and I, er. Pooled our memories. Put them down to parch – paper. Printed them. Yes.” He tried to waggle his eyebrows, Decker raised hers, and clearly they’d be having some more words once Trixie was away.

So Maze sat on the sofa arm, the kid sat in her mother’s lap, and settled between them Amenadiel started to show them the pictures. There were always several boys and girls in each of them, running around and laughing and climbing lush trees and riding giraffes. Sometimes – Decker’s eyes widened – they had tiny wings behind them. Of course. That stupid oaf, he hadn’t checked before bringing them down here.

“Why do you all have wings on some pictures?” Trixie asked. Of course. She’d noticed.

“Er.” Maze could see the realization of his mistake dawn in his eyes. “We. Liked to play dress up?” At least they probably could not have flown yet with those small wings. Hopefully he only brought memories from their younger days and she wouldn’t –

“Oooh but you’re flying in that one!” Damn him and his birdbrain. The kid turned around to look better at him. “Do you still have them?” Decker looked ready to murder him.

“Let’s look at the other pictures first, all right?” she said.

After about the tenth, Trixie pointed at one of the boys. “Is that you? You’ve got hair!” Maze and the detective snickered.

“Yes, it’s me.” He aimed for dignity and missed by miles.

“Who’s that one?” She stabbed a finger on another kid, with only a mop of curly black hair and a shy eye peeking out from behind Amenadiel’s already bulkier frame. Maze thought for a minute she’d never breathe again. I’d die if I were human, she thought.

“That’s my brother Samael,” he said after a pause.

“He looks shy.”

“Not exactly shy, no. But he was very quiet as a child.”

Trixie crawled on his knees and went back to the pictures they’d already gone through. She seemed fascinated by all the animals, all the vegetation. “You’re in all of them, right? It’s your baby pictures?” He nodded. “Did you grow up in a zoo?” Maze laughed so much she almost fell from the sofa, while he narrowed his eyes at her over the kid’s head. “It was very, er. No. Not a zoo.”

“Oh. Too bad. Zoos are cool.” She squinted at some pictures, and soon she was asking about the others. Eliel, Michael, Uriel… They were soon surrounded by parchments. “Is that Samael again?” They were older in that picture, looking like teenagers almost.

“Yes, that’s him.”

From the corner of her eye, Maze could see Decker, face very white and eyes very round. She’d recognized him. “What is he doing?” she asked.

He was sitting on a high branch, holding a big pot in his hands, an impish smile on his face. “About to drench us all in water, I imagine. Once he’d understood how quiet he could be, he used it to prank us. We never heard him.”

“Can I meet him?” She wasn’t paying any attention at all to her mother, and that was probably a good thing. The detective looked like she wanted to cry. Had she not really accepted the truth yet?

“… maybe,” he finally answered. What could he say? They went through the stack; kids roughhousing, kids laughing, (winged) kids grinning and playing and climbing and throwing things at each other. Amenadiel (and his hair) were in most of them, and so was… Samael. Often at the back, often with mischief in his eyes; a bit aloof, a bit wary; and for a long time smaller and skinnier than most of the others. Still in the middle of their fights, though.

“You shouldn’t pick on kids smaller than you,” Trixie said.

“Don’t worry. He was faster and sneakier than all of us.”

She still looked unconvinced. “And what about here? What’s he holding?” The small boy was sitting in green green grass and leaning against a tree, watching his siblings trying to climb an elephant.

“A flute.”

“Ooh! Do you play music too? Lucifer does, you know.” The detective remained silent, but blew her nose.

“I know,” he said. “Samael was always very gifted. He could play anything. He tried to teach me the harp, but I never was very good at it.”

In the last one, the kids looked about 10. They were in a giant pile, climbing over each other with blankets and pillows and branches and leaves and making a giant mess of everything. They looked happy.

“Where are your parents?”

He swallowed. "They… they were taking the pictures.”

“Oh. Okay.” She jumped down and ran to the kitchen and started yelling for Maze, and clearly it was milkshake time.

So she stood up, but before following the child she turned to Amenadiel. “She’ll remember the wing thing. What are you going to do then?”

“She’s young. Children are fine with us, Maze. Fine with our divine nature.”

“Hope you’re right.” After a last look at Decker, looking a bit shell-shocked and with suspiciously shiny eyes, she went after Trixie.

 

Amenadiel stayed after the girl and her mother had left, and Maze thought it might be the perfect time for a good argument, maybe a bit of fighting. Or… something, at least.

“Did you seriously think that was a good idea?”

“I thought it would make the kid happy.”

“Well, you made everyone else unhappy. Letting her see the wings?” She hissed out an angry breath between her teeth as she walked to the bar. “Decker’s going to rip you a new one.”

“I shouldn’t have brought those with Lucifer.”

“No, you definitely shouldn’t have.” She slammed back some hard liquor. “I didn’t even know you… grew up. Thought you’d just sprung out of a cloud or something.”

“No, we were… templates. For what was to come. A trial run. Of course, we didn’t know about it back then. When we learned about it, Luci didn’t take it well.”

“What. That you were the first draft?”

“Yes.” He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and poured himself a generous serving in Maze’s glass. “He didn’t really understand why they should be better, worthier. Freer. He got… restless.”

“Hm.” It certainly gave her a new perspective on her lord. She wasn’t sure she liked it. “Where has your hair gone?”

Amenadiel grimaced, she snickered, he tried to grab her, she countered with an elbow lock. They ended up panting and with their clothes torn off, the sofa broken under them and the low table shattered. _She_ didn’t like to talk.

 

Christmas was just around the corner when Maze found him back from hell. He was playing a slow thing on the upstairs piano, and seeing him here, this familiar sight that had been turning into a slowly blurring memory, stopped her for a minute. She watched him, and he tilted his head – he knew she was there.

“So you’re back.”

“So I’m back.”

“For good?”

“For a time.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I won’t… I won’t be constrained to one plane, Maze. I just won’t.”

She sat on the piano lid, watching him play. He seemed to be following a simple tune from his head, a musical stream of consciousness kind of thing. Or maybe his fingers were just daydreaming. He looked peaceful, for once. “What made you come back?” She feared his answer.

“I assume my brother told you about what I was doing.”

“You knew he visited?”

He raised his eyes to give her the flattest stare. “What do you think? I am the King of hell. I know what happens on my borders.” He hadn’t forgotten who he was. The thought comforted her.

“So?”

“I want to know if this time they’ll behave if I leave.”

“But you’ll have to go back.”

He let his left hand tap out a slow rhythm in the lowest keys to take a long drag of the cigarette that had been slowly consuming itself in the ashtray behind her. “I have been sent there to rule, and rule I shall. But I won’t let it be my prison again, Maze.” He stopped playing altogether. “I…”

“How did you do that? How did you get there and come back?” Without me, she didn’t say. Without me.

He gave her a small grin. “I decided I wasn’t a prisoner, Maze. I decided I wasn’t my father’s tool anymore.” He stood up and took her hands in his, his smile infectious – she felt the corner of her lips twitching up. “And so can you decide. You’d be quite happy with what I’ve left there, I think. Some of the old crowd are probably still terrified of the dark.”

“It’s always dark in hell.”

“ _Yes_.” That’s it, she was definitely grinning too. He twirled her a bit, plopped her on a bar stool, and started digging through his stash of alcohol. “Maze, have you been drinking and not replacing?”

She didn’t want to see his good mood evaporate as soon as she mentioned what, who had prompted his disappearance. But she didn’t have to. His eyes fell on something and he stalked to the (brand new) sofa, bent and retrieved a small purple, frilly swimsuit. He looked back at her, confusion on his features.

“They come by sometimes.”

“How often.” His tone was so… level.

“I don’t know, maybe once a week?” He sat heavily on the sofa. “The kid likes the pool. Your pet detective pestered Amenadiel until he gave her some news.”

“She’s not my… what you said.”

“Sure.”

“She can’t come here now I’m back.” Hah. Fat chance. As soon as she’d know he was back, she’d seek him out. His eyes fell on a discarded folder on the coffee table, and he picked it up. Shit, she thought – too late. He quickly thumbed through the pictures, threw the folder on the cushion next to him, and leaned his head back on the backrest. “Amenadiel roped some of my siblings into this, I assume.” He watched her nod, then closed his eyes. “She saw them.”

“Yes.” He didn’t answer, and after a while she left him there, slow controlled breathing and fingers twitching to some inner music.

At around 2, he went down to Lux, sleek and smiling and sliding around everyone, all slippery and newly untouchable and yet all the more desirable in the crowd. He had them eating out of his hand in minutes, then drinking his music, his singing. He’d missed it, she thought. But when he left the club to go back to the penthouse, he was alone.

 

On Christmas eve, a few days later, Maze was still wondering when the detective and her child would come. She assumed she’d learned he was back, because local bloggers had all gushed about the return of the prodigal club owner. Or maybe she wasn’t here for the end of year celebrations humans had. Who knew? Lux would be open anyway, and it would be packed – more people than journalists and TV anchors would think didn’t, in fact, have family nearby at this time of year… or were sometimes fleeing them.

She watched Lucifer bending over the insides of his piano, checking it was all in order according to whatever his specifications were. Music was apparently one of those things that he’d carried over from his earlier days. If there had been days back then. How would she know? She had spawned in hell, fully formed and self-aware and herself from the first hour – the first minute. She was supposed to be eternal and unchanging, and look at her, wondering what a human spawn was doing right now.

“Have you thought about what I said, Maze?”

“You say many things.”

He stood up and closed the piano lid carefully. “Will you go back to hell?”

“Maybe.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m still sworn to you.”

“You’re the only one holding yourself to it.” He wandered to the bar and she pushed a tumbler in his hand.

“What are you going to do when she gets here?”

He looked into his whiskey, swirling it around and watching the liquid cling to the glass, drops slowly sliding down, down, back into the liquid at the bottom and only leaving a little shiny trace of their existence on the sides of the tumbler; before being swallowed back into oblivion. “I don’t know.”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling, pensive; and her eyes fell on the little scar under his chin. He’d told her, long ago, how his brother had held him at sword’s point, how he had thought Michael was about to cut off his head. He’d probably have welcomed it at the time, she’d guessed. But instead he’d been thrown down, and the sword nicked him, and the cut had still been bleeding when she’d opened her eyes for the first time. A scarred archangel. The first one.

He’d often been the first, really.

She took his now empty glass from his lax fingers, and his attention snapped back to her. “I’ll think on it,” he said before he left.

 

Patrons were crowding the club, and there was that slightly desperate edge in the air of people trying even harder to prove the rest of the world how much they were enjoying themselves being here and not elsewhere. Although no one cared, really. At least Maze didn’t.

Lucifer had already done a first set, and his second was approaching, when as he was walking down the stairs to go mingle with the crowd something stirred the air. They shared a glance, and he ran back down the stairs as she followed.

“What is it?”

“Trouble.”

“What kind?”

Fast and reckless, he drove in the direction of the ocean. “The bad kind.” He narrowed his eyes. “They’re challenging _me_. They want to force _my_ hand.”

“I thought you’d…”

“I’ll crush them again.” He parked near a beach, and then Maze thought she recognized it. She’d followed him here before. They were near Decker’s place.

He stalked onto the sand, and she realized there was a lone figure close to the water, long hair streaming behind. She turned to them. “They’ve got her,” she said. “We’d stayed home because she was a bit sick and I didn’t want to drive to my mother’s with Trixie throwing up in the back and…” She shook her head. There was something still smoking in her hand, charred and crumbling. An arm, she realized. She’d torn a demon’s arm off.

He took a few more steps and suddenly, great white wings tore through his clothes and filled the space around him. She felt her mouth open slightly, and she saw Decker was gaping too.

“Lucifer,” she said.

He winked back at her. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He walked into the ocean and it parted around him, frothing and heaving and boiling. Maze dragged the detective back, taking care to only grab her sleeve, and kept her in place. Shapes were coalescing in the water, then rising and looming. She could recognize some of them; damned souls or former… not friends, exactly. Colleagues, perhaps. They’d had the same goals. The same desires, the same pleasures. Now…

They seemed surprised by his presence, and even more the wings. One of them stretched out a clawed hand, tried to rip a few feathers out. A hand fell in the water, and there was a howl.

Lucifer’s clothes were smoldering now, falling to the ground in incinerated pieces and revealing blood-red flesh. His wings seemed to reflect the colors around them, yellow and orange and getting darker as the eye traveled to the tips. The ocean was steaming around him, and almost jumped away when he thrust an arm into its depths to drag another demon out by the neck. “Where.”

“My lord.”

Lucifer started squeezing. “Where.” The demon only wheezed, until – snap. He threw the body away, head lolling, until it melted into the dark angry sea. “Maze.”

“I’ll go.” She turned her head to see Amenadiel next to them. “You shouldn't have to fight your own brothers and sisters.” You would know, she thought with a nod as he flew away.

“Where is she? Where’s my daughter? He didn’t answer.”

Maze nodded to a cliff in the distance. “He did. He looked over there. Amenadiel will bring her back.” Decker tried to get away from her but she held fast. As long as the detective didn’t try to touch her… but she didn’t. They both turned back to watch Lucifer’s cold and fiery rage, his blood lust – keeping the snarling creatures surrounding him at bay with razor-sharp wings, picking them one by one to crush them or dismember them, methodical and terrifying. They were shrieking in pain and yet still more came out at him, and it seemed the legions of hell had turned against him since they couldn’t attack the heavens.

“Why are they not coming towards us?” The detective’s eyes left the cliffs to turn to Maze. “Why are you not fighting?”

“My loyalty is to him, not to hell.”

“You could fight.”

“So could you.” She toed the charred limb at their feet. “You did earlier. Why not now?”

“I… I don’t know.”

I bet you’re surprised at yourself, Maze thought. You look like it. Should put her out of her misery before she did actually try to attack and got herself killed. “Don’t fret. We can’t, Decker. Just as they can’t escape him, we can’t.”

“Can’t.” She was good at the flat, stop-bullshitting-me, stare; you had to give her that. Probably one of the things he loved – she sassed him right back. Also, probably why Maze herself hadn’t liked her for so long; she had spotted the danger to her lord.

She gestured at the sand, the sea, Lucifer in front of them; towering above the parted sea and the grotesque, writhing shapes of the demons. “He’s not doing it all by himself. He’s feeding on us. Siphoning us.”

“What?”

“He’s an archangel, you know that. He is… powerful. Very powerful. Before he became the king of hell, he…” she gestured at the night sky. “Did this. Made your sky beautiful. And his power is so strong, it’s drawing them in and calling to ours. He’s using it. Can’t you feel it?”

They watched him slowly make a fist over a crouching figure, which slowly crumbled on itself with a piercing, shrill cry that tapered out into a long, rattling breath and then cut off abruptly.

“This is the first time I’ve seen him like that. In all the millennia I’ve known him…”

The beating of wings and a soft landing behind them, and the detective whirled around. “Trixie!” The child ran into her mother’s arms, and the detective turned away slightly so that the kid would not see Lucifer’s murderous rage.

“So he’s embracing it at last,” he said, watching his brother.

They felt the detective’s eyes on them from where she knelt on the sand. “We’re not talking to you,” Maze said.

“You’re talking right next to me.” Well. Eavesdropping, huh. She couldn’t have only flaws. “So what’s he embracing?” Her hands never left her daughter. “Thank you, by the way,” she added. She buried her face in the dark hair, matted with feverish sweat.

Amenadiel shrugged. “Well, it’s, uh. Lucifer… is angry. He’s always been angry; angry at mankind’s freedom, angry we were only meant to obey, angry at being denied what you all had – love and hate, choice and mistakes, joy and sadness… He was the first to, well. Feel, I guess. And then it spread among all of us. Like an epidemic. Father was furious.”

The steam that surrounded Lucifer almost entirely obscured him now. He was a burning shape from behind a cloud lit from within, framed by a dark winter night sky and the sound of furious waves hissing and crashing and trying to conquer back the circle where he’d encroached on their kingdom.

“He cast him out. He made him the punisher, so he could see all the consequences of having what he’d craved, what he’d contaminated us with. We’d only been meant to be an extension of father’s will, and now we were… not. We’d become children to keep an eye on.” He sat on the sand, wings spread wide enough to shelter them from a cold breeze coming down from the hills. Maze followed suit.

“Children are not their parents’… things! You didn’t look like robots on those pictures,” Decker said. The kid was almost asleep in her arms, untroubled by whatever was happening around them. She was probably exhausted.

“No. But we were what our father had wanted us to be. Samael had always been a bit… more. It amused father, and he was the favorite.”

“Until he wasn’t.”

“He was upsetting the balance in heaven. Father thought he should learn, and he needed someone to rule hell. And that’s why he was made the punisher. His executioner.”

And punish he had done, and was still doing. His anger burned, incandescent, illuminating the night around them yet eerily quiet; only the sound of the ocean and the sand and the occasional whimper surrounding them. All the rebels, the angry damned souls following those demons who had thought they could defy Satan himself – all of them dying a second time before being sent back down.

“He didn’t like it.”

“No, he really didn’t. He forswore a lot of his birthright. Even his name.”

“His wings,” the detective said.

“Yes.”

Maze wondered how it could be that no humans had come here with cameras and helicopters and journalists and policemen. Maybe even now his father was watching over him. Hiding him – them.

“What should we do?” Hah. The cop thing didn’t disappear in her off-hours.

“Oh, nothing. We can’t stop him.”

 

They stayed there on the beach until morning. Amenadiel took the child in his lap and curled a wing around her, and after a while Decker fell asleep too. Maze wondered if Lucifer would realize what he’d just done – finally truly merging heaven and hell in himself, his divine nature and his hellish one… with the detective’s help and her own, too. She went to his car to grab a few essentials – a blanket, a clothes bag; and detoured to the detective’s home to get some snacks and drinks.

As the light was slowly spilling from behind the hills to reach them, so the ocean was calming down around Lucifer. Samael? A bit of both, she decided. His huge wings were still much brighter than anything else, made up of fire and going from blue-white on his back to a dark red at the tip. He shook them over the dark water, briefly illuminating some strange looking remains underwater. They’d probably be entirely gone by midday.

Decker was blinking her eyes open when he turned around and went from a fiery giant to a burned, red man to the Lucifer she was used to, his wings going from flame to red to white before fading out as he waded through the ocean that had reconquered its rightful domain. He must still be burning inside, because when he got out of the water a cloud of steam rose from him and he looked dry. And very naked. She threw the clothes bag at him, looking pointedly at Trixie who was already making waking-up noises.

“Oh,” he said as it smacked him in the chest. “Right.” He dressed quickly, avoiding everyone’s eyes; and walked away to his Corvette, presumably.

Decker tried to follow him but Amenadiel caught her shoulder. “Let him have some time to himself first,” he said. Maze wasn’t sure that was such a great idea; left to his own devices he did some pretty stupid things sometimes.

“He looks sad, Mommy,” Trixie whispered in the cool morning air. “He can’t be sad, it’s Christmas.”

“It is, baby. How are you feeling?”

“I’m all better.” She wriggled out from under Amenadiel’s wing, apparently totally unfazed after a night in an angel’s lap. Well, he’d probably soothed her mind and body through the hours, angel that he was. “Can I kiss you hello?”

“Sure you can.”

And so they all got a morning hug, and then they walked to the house and Amenadiel made breakfast (“what, did you think my brother was the only one who could?”) while the Detective did her Christmas phone calls with her daughter and Maze wondered if she was supposed to do the human gift thing they did on this day and if yes, how one went about it.

“Don’t you have to go back, er, up to sing praises or something?” Decker asked as they sat down at the breakfast table.

“I’ll fly up later, yes; but it can wait a bit. Let us share breakfast first.”

“We won’t say graces, right? Mi abuelita always does. I hate it!”

Oh, so the kid spoke Spanish. “We certainly won’t.” Maze glared at Amenadiel in case he had considered it, and he looked mildly embarrassed. Hah.

“Cool!”

They tucked in; and it was, Maze thought, both very new and oddly… nice? Except someone wasn’t here, and she wasn’t the only one to feel his absence. Amenadiel noticed her looking around the table.

“You know, it’s how we’ve often felt since he fell.”

“I thought you hated him.”

“We felt so many things, and all because of him. He still is our brother. We’re family.”

“I think he needs hugs.” All eyes swiveled to Trixie. “Everybody needs hugs.”

He’s the lord of hell, Maze thought. “He never did before,” she said out loud.

“Really?” Amenadiel asked. Yes, well. He was changing. They all were. Or maybe she was seeing him differently. A blend of it all, maybe; all poured in a shaker with some ice and hot spices and shaken, shaken hard to create something new. Feelings churning in the gut. How did humans survive it?

“Can I go hug him now?”

Decker laughed. “Not now, baby. First, we’re going to have a wash and get ready for when your grandparents get here, all right?”

But she looked a bit pensive too. Maybe the detective was thinking the same thing as she was. He was always so uncomfortable when the kid launched herself at him, perfectly at ease with sex and fights but completely flustered with everything else. Maybe Decker could change that. Her and her _spawn_ , as he called the girl.

 

When mother and daughter had gone up and they could hear them splashing around in the bathroom, Maze turned to Amenadiel as she wiped a plate dry (how low had she fallen, really. Or. Could a demon fall?).

“Have you been called up?”

“Not yet, but I’ll be very soon. I should talk with our siblings anyway.”

“I’ll go check on him, then.”

“I’ll drop you at Lux before going.”

Ah, yes. Getting there… Good point.

 

He left her on a street behind the building, and she checked the club had been satisfactorily cleaned before taking the elevator. She tiptoed in the penthouse and found him sprawled on the leather sofa, barefoot and with his shirtsleeves rolled up, one arm hanging over the edge of the cushion and the other flung back over the armrest. There were track marks on his skin – he must have shot up pretty recently for them to be still visible. She spotted the syringe half-rolled under the couch, next to a tumbler, spilled pills and an ashtray. He would keep the LA drug traffic community thriving all by himself at this rate.

It was weird, how needles could pierce an angel’s skin if they wanted it but demon blades could kill them, how bullets couldn’t touch them if they saw them coming but only stung if they were surprised.

And then there was the detective's strange power over him.

She watched him sleep for a while, his long dark lashes fluttering sometimes over his cheeks, his hair all in disarray, his fingers twitching in the air at odd moments. She went out to watch the city from the balcony, a bottle of her favorite vodka in hand.

 

She hadn’t heard him move in a long time, and she wondered how long he’d remain comatose. He must be exhausted, she thought. Maybe she should leave him be now. She was leaving the kitchen where she’d left her glass and the empty bottle when she heard the elevator door open, and she hid behind the wall to see who it was.

Decker, of course. She’d better not hurt him.

She sat next to his hip, whispered, “hi, sleepyhead,” and finally he blinked up at her.

“Detective? What…” He started to sit up but then looked warily at her and stopped moving.

“I thought about last night.” She bent to retrieve the detritus of his day and scrunched her nose at the syringe and pills before dropping them on the table and turning back to face him. “Is that how you’ve spent the hours since then?”

He lay back fully on the couch, careful not to touch her. Maze could see his hands fluttering awkwardly around, trying to find a place to rest that wasn’t the detective. “Do you disapprove?”

“You could have stayed with us. Your brother cooks a mean breakfast.” She giggled at his indignant expression. “You’ll just have to prove you’re better than him, then.” Maze couldn’t see her face, but she could picture it; a teasing smile, eyes half-lidded. He must have started to say something, because she cut him off with a hand on his shirt. He froze and looked up at her.

“You…”

“Don’t worry, Lucifer. I won’t hurt you.”

He didn’t seem convinced, but didn’t move a muscle either when she started unbuttoning his white shirt, careful to avoid his skin. She parted the fabric, and – it was so quiet. He’d even stopped breathing; like a deer caught in her light, he was frozen. She put her hand on his sternum, no fabric between them; and he made a soft noise – a long exhale, it was like relief and salvation and awe and, she decided, home.

He  lifted his hand, cupped her face – cautious, then getting bolder, skimming her skin with his fingertips;  her nose, her lips, her cheek . She let him explore, curling her palm around his neck. He raised himself on an elbow,  and she lowered her face, and she heard him whisper her name. 

They wouldn't see or hear her if she got out now, she thought as she opened the door to the stairwell. Not now the king of hell had his queen. She caught herself smiling and quickly reined it in.

Now, when would Amenadiel be back?


End file.
